Module Blog - 'Feel Good Drinks Co'

Here I will record any practical development of my work, through appropriate contextual research. I will post up anything I find interesting or relevant with regard to my current collaborative brief. 

Monday 30 March 2009

Presentation boards.. and end of module evaluation..













BA (Hons.) GRAPHIC DESIGN – END OF MODULE SELF-EVALUATION

Module Title: FEEL GOOD collaboration brief...

1. What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?


I feel that working collaboratively with someone else has given me a sense of respect towards a partnership. I have been able to address my strengths and my weaknesses and I feel this has helped me to develop as a better designer. I have learnt to be more direct with my planning and feel that I have also got a sense of direction for my work now. I feel that it has made me more aware that I would like to do more image based and illustrative work and focus my skills upon this area. I feel that by developing my image making skills within this module has helped me to become more aware of this and my practice. I feel I developed my skills further in Adobe Illustrator and layout for my final presentation boards. Working with Hayley was a breath of fresh air as she made me think about issues I wouldn't normally have considered.

2. What approaches to generating work and solutions to problems have you developed and how have they helped?

Working collaboratively has helped me develop ideas quickly to work out resolutions. I have found myself trying and testing work at pace and being able to bounce ideas off one another has also overcome problems. Being able to talk to someone that I am working with rather than talking to someone for advice in crits has been helpful. I have found it inspirational and we both had a constant enthusiasm throughout the brief. I have used Hayleys approaches to idea generation through mock-ups and brainstorming very helpful. Although we had quite similar ways of working I found her idea development was a little different to mine. We worked by sketching out our ideas and trying illustrations. Where as I would normally have just noted down my ideas rather than visualising them. I feel I need to work like this more in the future.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?

I feel my strengths lie in image making, illustration and layout. I will capitalise on these by focusing my work practice on these skills in future projects. I will carry on working in an illustrative and image way and try to develop the strengths of my illustrations. I would also like to develop a style that is recognisably my own.

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how could you exploit these more fully?


I constantly criticise my time management and organisational skills. I need to address this and become more focused in my way of working. Working with someone else helped me to become better at this and stick to deadlines appropriately. I also feel that I need to practice my illustration skills. I don't draw enough outside of projects and modules in my spare time and would like to begin a notebook of my own illustrations and sketches. I realise that when i come to draw it doesn't come as easily to me as when I have been drawing in my free time. Practice makes perfect!
I also feel that I need to organise my development work better and continually evaluate my work as i progress, i don't do enough of this and will start to put more work on my blog.

5. Identify five things that you will do different next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

1. I would possibly try to team up with a collaborative partner that had a wider range of skills that were opposite to mine. I felt that Hayley and I were too similar in our ways of working.
2. Try to manage my time better. We both stressed out a but towards the end!
3. Take ideas further and try to develop them more fully. Carry on with ideas even after hand in.
4. Explore a wider range of print stocks and expand my knowledge upon them.
5. Work more visually, sketching out ideas, rather than in note form.

Wednesday 18 March 2009

WOBBLER!


Final Tag Designs..


Font decisions..



Arista 2.0



green pilloww



Gill sans

The above fonts are the chosen ones we have used throughout our project. We have gone for these because we didn't want to stray too away from the existing fonts used by Feel Good already. The final one which is Gill sans, is however an exception to this rule, but together we decided this was an appropriate choice for the text added to the back of lables because it is clean cut, sans serif and doesn't compete with the illustrations or Feel Good type.

Drinks photography..

Having chatted about how we are going to lay out our final presentation boards, we have started looking into drinks photography and how we are going to deliver our idea. We are aware that our first board has to be high impact saying, 'Look at my product, this is why you want it, this is why it will work for you.' The YCN boards that we are currently working to produce are delivered to sell the product and show how good it is and how it will work. The rest such as showing inspiration and development isn't important. Looking at how drinks have been advertised and photographed for previous campaigns, has given us inspiration as to how we want to show our product and where the focus on the product will be aimed at. Obviously the main focus is the swing tag that will hang around the neck of the bottle, so thus the focus of how we show the tag will have to be thought about thoroughly in order to show our product at it's best.














I particularly feel that the following photographs taken of Absolute Vodka are very inspirational and helpful toward how we might portray our product on our first board. Great use of lighting and emphasis on exactly where and what they want to show. Also great use of frame and positioning.